investment

Today, in a whole new year, let’s talk about parts versus wholes. The theme is hardly new, but it bears repeating, lest we forget how essential they both are — to each other, to us, and to our financial well-being.

“The American marketplace is an economic jungle. As in all jungles, you easily can be destroyed if you don’t know the rules of survival… but you also can come through in fine shape and you can even flourish in the jungle — if you learn the rules, adapt them for your own use, and heed them.” — Sylvia Porter

Over the last 3 years, the Internal Revenue Service has been engaged in a virtual currency compliance campaign to address tax noncompliance related to cryptocurrency use. The IRS’ efforts have included outreach to taxpayers through education, audits of taxpayers’ returns, and even criminal investigations.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In our last piece, we introduced some of the tools of the tax-planning trade. These include tax-sheltered accounts for saving toward retirement, healthcare, and education, as well as tax-efficient tools for charitable giving, emergency spending, and estate planning.   

We’ve learned a lot about investing over the past 60 years, a period that has seen many breakthroughs in the world of finance. What we know comes from studying public markets and is grounded in serious academic research. The lessons are clear: Investing in markets is an excellent plan for meeting long-term goals, like maximizing your retirement income.

If you have purchased, owned, sold, gifted, made purchases with, or used cryptocurrency in business transactions, there are certain tax issues you need to know about. Unfortunately, there are some unanswered questions and little specific guidance offered by the IRS other than in Notice 2014-21 and Revenue Ruling 2019-24.

Sixty years after imagining the project, and after both had passed away, why did the famed artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrap L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris in silvery-blue fabric and red rope (which became an especially ethereal nighttime display)? 

Whether you’ve been investing for decades or are just getting started, at some point on your investment journey you’ll likely ask yourself some of the questions below. Trying to answer these questions may be intimidating, but know that you’re not alone. Your financial advisor is here to help.

In our last piece, we covered the recent uptick in inflation, and what to make of it in a historical context. For investors, it’s important to take a step back and look at the big picture before acting on breaking news, but what if inflation does get out of hand, and stays that way for a while?